A lot more of us would have made Harvard, that’s for sure

Spicoli It was San Francisco in the mid-Seventies … the Vietnam War had ended two years earlier, so there was plenty of Peace, the Castro District was filling rapidly, so there was oodles of Love, and the Haight-Ashbury had degenerated from counter-cultural nexus to outright Heroin addiction, so there was plenty of Dope …

… and the best class in High School … the only class we dared not cut was Foods.

That’s where those in search of a boost to their Grade Point Average went – after being bitch-slapped by Math, Science, or English.

Foods … first you went out back to spark a Fatty with your pals, then you hustled yourself to Foods, where you’d gorge on half baked chocolate cupcakes, or Oatmeal cookies made with Cornmeal, or something sweet or fattening that had been stepped on, undercooked, or someone had spit in when you weren’t looking …

With my youth as backdrop, why is it only now that I can move to South Carolina, letter in fishing and score a four year scholarship, plus dangle the Homecoming Queen on my arm – instead of her fawning over that troglodyte linebacker with his single eyebrow ?

“If it was recognized as a varsity sport, then your benefits would be you can letter in it, you can get scholarships,” said Camden Fishing Club member Catie Charles, a freshman. “But right now you don’t. You just go out there for fun and nobody really notices.”

– via Fox News.com

If I could’ve fished my way through 2nd period, Foods class would have been a distant memory, and we might’ve damaged less brain cells that were a Food’s prerequisite (not to mention the occasional brush with ptomaine poisoning).

“I heard that throwing 150 casts is equivalent to throwing 100 pitches in a game,” said Fishing Club member Carson Morgan. And, according to their coach, serious anglers often make 500 casts in a day.

… and based on the above whopper, it’s obvious those kids are learning the all important ethics lessons of fishing, truth before all else.

As bass boats and terminal tackle would be in obvious short supply, we could ensure all the loafers, dopers, and riff-raff avoided class by requiring participants to strip and don athletic supporters.

(Wild rolling of eyes … Strip and expose my video game sculpted flesh to public scrutiny, OhMyGawd, anything but that …)

Heroes, every last one …

I don’t believe a word of it myself, mostly because I buy into every conspiracy theory possible … and … they were replaying Spartacus in my hotel room last night …

The incident occurred on state Route 124 south of Hillsboro and involved a truck  hauling a tank filled with rainbow trout en route to Rocky Fork Lake.

The truck was about 20 miles north of the Kincaid Hatchery when the tank fell off, according to a hatchery spokesman.

The human occupants of the truck were unhurt, but the fish are considered a loss according to Tim Parrett, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

– via NBC4i.com

I figure all them 9” -11” fish realized they were cannon fodder anyways, and like the desperate heroism of Flight 93, rushed the driver in a bid for freedom.

Thinking they were gnawing through the brake lines, they got the Covad mounts instead …

Took a week to clear the freeway, but only because the clean up crew were limited to “five per day, ten in possession.”

Maybe in addition to underachieving they possess small finger skills and great patience

Robert Conrad does Pappy Boyington Naturally I’d rather not dwell on the fact that I was right and you was horribly wrong … actually I would, but I’d exhaust the subject of my presumed greatness in about three seconds.

Just long enough for your next tired exhale …

Now every recruitment drive to enlist them thick-witted kids of yours into the ranks of Outdoorsmen, highlights our collective shortcomings as parents and teachers, as due to our inability to pay down our mortgage, they’re now known as “Generation Stuck.”

What’s so damning is in addition to their feet under your table well into their thirties, you’ve had twice as long to teach them respect for the Woods and fly fishing as your Dad, and whiffed horribly …

But Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother. The Great Recession and the still weak economy make the trend toward risk aversion worse. Children raised during recessions ultimately take fewer risks with their investments and their jobs. Even when the recession passes, they don’t strive as hard to find new jobs, and they hang on to lousy jobs longer.

– via the BusinessInsider.com

… me, I was only thinking we should recruit alternate-lifestyle anglers hoping to spare you the microscope of public opinion and scorn. I recognized that the tone deaf little weasel that shares your name is expert in joysticks, Hellfire missiles, and targeting Toyota trucks filled with insurgents, only he can’t hold down a job long enough to buy his next video game …

Sure. My little funny generated plenty of hushed whispers and death threats, but that Politically Correct Lightning bolt of Death, intent on cleaving me from topknot to breastbone, ain’t going to happen. Political Correctness was invented so you didn’t have to take a stand on any subject at a cocktail party, nor did you have to reveal you’d never read Dickens, Henry James*, and the only Conrad you knew swaggered his way through Baa Baa Black Sheep …

(*yuck)

Six hundred things edited out of Fly Fisherman as the Zip Code wasn’t exotic enough No 311 & No 288

Flat tinsel is one of the many thousands of fly tying tasks that are intuitive in concept and unduly difficult in practice. Tinsel in past decades was flat metal, which sliced through fingertips with only slightly more resistance than tying thread.

The switch to Mylar eased the bloodletting and ended tarnish, but had the same problems with its application. Now you had to remember to tie in the color opposite what the body would be, as one side was silver and the other gold, which would result in the only cost savings two hundred years of fly tying has ever produced.

gold_side_facing

Figure 1: Gold side facing you means the fly will have a silver body

Tinsel bodies are quite common in trout streamers and steelhead flies, and can be tamed with three simple tricks; always use the widest tinsel available to cover the most with the least number of wraps, never overlap turns, and always double wrap the body, never attempt to single wrap the fly.

Tinsel is cheap – there’s little advantage in hoarding it.

Never overlap turns of tinsel

Figure 2: No turns overlap

If even the slightest overlap occurs it will create a “bubble” or air gap that will eventually slip to reveal the thread wraps beneath. Always wrap the first layer so you can see thread color between turns.

Final layer added, no overlap

Figure 3: Final layer of tinsel added

There are no overlaps on the upper layer of tinsel either. Because the two layers are at right angles to one another, no thread is visible despite our leaving rather obvious gaps on the bottom layer.

In the above “Comet” style of steelhead fly, I used an under-the-tail-wrap to change direction and bring the second layer forward to the eye. This makes the change of direction seamless, and lifts the tail away from the hook bend.

As an additional step, one that I’ve been asked about, is how the “tip-first” style of hackling subsurface flies can accommodate a second color.

Comet’s have a mixed orange and yellow hackle, and “folding” hackle so it drapes back naturally, precludes a second color – given that winding it forward would bind the first to the shank.

Instead, treat both feathers as if they were a single feather. Size the hackles by spreading the barbs perpendicular to the stems with your fingers. Place one on top of the other, and using either the thumb (top feather) or forefinger (bottom feather) slide the two along each other until the stroked barbules are the same length, as below:

slide the two feathers until the barbules are the same length

Figure 4: Both orange and yellow fibers match in length

A better view below, showing the two hackles now tied in, yet spread from the stem so you can see they’re of identical length …

A better look at the two feathers barbules

When gripped thusly, the forefinger controls the tension on the bottom feather, and the thumb controls stem tension on the top color. Note how the stroked perpendicular barbules are of the same raw length.

Now all that remains is to keep the stems together under equal tension when you stroke them at right angles with your scissors, or saliva equipped fingers, whatever is your favorite tool for moving the fibers to the same side.

Fibers now stroked roughly to the same side

Figure 5: Fibers stroked roughly to the same side

I use the edge of my scissors scraped towards me to break the backs of all the fibers and push them to a single side. Fingers finish the task, by stroking anything unruly back into line. Note how close the two stems are kept, they might as well be a single stem.

Now wind two forward

Figure 6: Winding both colors forward

This technique ensures the proper balance of colors as one turn of orange yields one turn of yellow, and the mixed color is exactly half of each. Adjust the stems over lumps or bumps using the finger that controls the wayward stem – bring it back in line with the other so they wind as a single object.

The completed comet style

Figure 7: The completed “Comet” style

This style of hackle does away with the overly large head caused by wrapping over the “dry fly style” hackling and forcing it down and over the back of the fly. A fly tied with this style hackle can have a head no larger than a trout fly if done correctly.

Note how the sizing we did at the beginning yields flues of equal length for both colors? No more guesswork needed to pick two hackles, simply slide them around until the flue length matches.

Using the right “style” of hackle for the task is a very important distinction a tyer makes on his path to mastery. When he understands why he abandons “butt-first dry fly hackle” for his underwater flies, it’s a real milestone in his formative process.

If you just boiled them SOB’s the problem would be solved

While I relish reading about Science, I’ve no doubt that it’s more fun to be interested in Science than to be a scientist. For all the reasons you’d suspect; it’s much easier and more fun to jump to conclusions than prove them, and you can defend your erroneous assumptions by claiming the other fellow is stupid, something the scientific process will not countenance.

Much of my interest is in aquatic insects and invasive species, and as a reader of other’s work, I’ll suggest there are many really clever assumptions that aren’t as well known and we rarely have an opportunity to hear.

Foremost is the debate over whether invasive species are bad. Which seems like a no brainer on the surface, but in many cases the species being replaced isn’t native, there’s debate on how long it has to be here to be “native,” and if you believe Man crossed the Ice Bridge from Kamchatka, then we’re an invasive species too …

A great deal of heated debate considers the larger issue simply “survival of the fittest”, Darwinism, and with each great leap forward in travel, we’ll incur another invasion of foreigners.

On rare occasion I find much humor in the midst of all this seriousness, most of which is accidental, but points out something instantly understandable to us lay-scientists, like …

Sex-deprived fruit flies drink more alcohol

Not knowing how much time, effort, and tax dollars went into the above, us faux-scientists would have agreed, then pointed at the unsteady fellow at the far end of the bar as proof positive.

Our American Signal Crayfish is likely to extinct the UK’s White Clawed Crayfish, and is source of much invasive angst among British anglers and scientists …

I keep flashing back to the World War II mantra levied against our American GI’s, how they were “Oversexed, Overpaid, and Over here” – and wonder what’s really changed …

The American signal crayfish ate up to 83 per cent more food per day than did their native cousins. The research also showed that white-clawed crayfish are much more choosy about what they eat, preferring particular types of prey, while the signals eat equal amounts of all prey.

– via PhysOrg.com

Okay, so now it’s “Oversexed, Over-ate & Over here”, which is nearly the same thing.

For the European cadre of Singlebarbed, allow me to reassure you, our Signal Crayfish will develop Type II Diabetes, because it can’t distinguish between a home cooked meal and a dog turd, and will soon expire in huge numbers, which is what our doctors have been predicting of our population for the last couple of decades …

Thankfully, you’ll not ask me to prove that – but if you need a recipe for boiled “mud bugs” – I’m your Man …

You’re a freeloader because you spent everything getting there

freeloader You’ve resolved to fly halfway around the globe like the magazines say you must, purchasing specialty “single use” terminal gear and flies worthy of your exotic foe, despite knowing you’ll never be able to use those flies or that gear at home …

… and after prostrating yourself numerous times and alienating spouse and progeny, you arrive many time zones distant with invasive species and jet lag, only to endure yet another cavity search and the impound of all your rubber soled shoes and any Scotch you brought …

… and rather than the bright cheerful smiles of indigenous natives you’re called “freeloader.”

The document noted that international anglers typically targeted remote backwaters more intensively and over longer periods than New Zealand anglers, but did no more to contribute to freshwater fisheries management.

Local anglers sometimes saw international anglers as freeloaders who were using an asset they have had no part in creating or maintaining, the report noted.

Seems to me they’ve omitted that part in all those travel articles espousing exotic locales and even rarer fish.

To add insult to injury, now that you’ve infested their island paradise with voracious man-eating diatoms, devalued their currency via wastrel economics and voodoo banking, insulted most of their womenfolk, and insisted on an umbrella on all your drinks, they’re going to jack up the cost of your fishing license as punishment.

Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson today said she was considering a new fishing licence structure under which non-residents would pay higher licence fees than locals, as is common overseas.

I’d say you were lucky to get off so easily … if I was Minister of the Interior, I’d put you back on the plane after confiscating your fly rod, knowing you lacked the courtesy to wipe your feet before entering my country.

Screw tourism, if mitigating the after-effects of their fishing costs more than I can siphon from their wallet during their stay, they can dangle their unwashed footwear in my ocean, rather than my trout stream.

Massachusetts fishermen get Quantitative Easing, the rest of us don’t

fistful_cash To say I’m a little miffed us Californio’s didn’t make the test group is putting it mildly. Us west coasters still bear a chip on the shoulder as Martha’s Vineyard & “Jaws” stole our sharks, and outside of a secretary that didn’t float and her sodden senator boss, always wondered what Massachusetts had to offer that Connecticut didn’t have …

Bygones being bygones, if the federal government decides to test the value of recreational fishing to Massachusetts residents by offering random license holders a cash settlement in lieu of their fishing license, I shouldn’t complain. In short, the NOAA will pay up to $500 hard cash – if you promise not to wet a line the entire year.

… naturally I pondered that formula and realized us anglers have never seen fishing as a profit-driven tool, given how we learned it was a money-sink by the close of our first lesson …

Yet, ponder the concept … Statistically we go fishing nine times a year, and if we figure the costs for; room ($120), food ($65), gas ($120), tippet ($15), and obligatory dozen flies ($24), plus that extra ____ ($150) we bought that the wife doesn’t know about, our season is about $4500 per year.

Instead of that marriage-damaging debt-burden you get a handful of crisp new Benjamin Franklins to make a mortgage payment …

… which by my calculations is a tenfold return on your investment.

I’ll confess the topic had me wondering what my magic number would be, and in light of my jiffo-whip math above, how I might package that into a Pied-Piper pitch reminiscent of Bernie Madoff.  I could jettison the scissor business for financial counseling to bait fishermen, who we’ve always suspected of being weak-minded and therefore impressionable ..

That’s when I realized us Californian’s weren’t ask to participate because our numbers would astronomically high, and adjusted for inflation – and while our real estate might have tanked, our downfall was how our imagined collective self worth was in excess of the Federal Reserve …

An overlooked market of high net worth sports, eager to tackle both long rod and the environment?

ymca2 The Board of Directors hunkers over a table insisting someone, typically not there to defend themselves, is appointed to the Recruitment Committee chair, whose mission will be to swell an aging membership with new blood.

In uninspired fashion, that poor soul looks for a couple of kids with an attention span long enough to get really bored, so thirty-seven old guys can lecture them on the proper way to hold their wrist.

Neatly removing “fun” from the proceedings, and ensuring the time spent with youth is completely unsuccessful, given that kids hate lectures – as do those of us tasked with delivering a stilted and balky sermon to an uncaring audience …

Kids are not interested in being around their parents, most are no longer drawn to the out of doors, nor do they seek the company of adults that really could care less – but feel obligated to pass onto them something that was passed to them by even older guys.

It’s time we thought outside the box …

Instead of kids, let’s take a cue from the North Dakota tourism bureau and recruit the gay angler.

Though the plan is still in its early stages, the bureau hopes to tap into the $70 billion market generated by the gay community.

The market is so big that websites like Orbitz and Travelocity have dedicated gay travel sections, and the visitor’s bureau wants to take advantage of that huge market.

Wait, Stop! … hear me out on this one …

Firstly, with all the clothing manufacturers jettisoning olive drab, tan, and the muted tones in favor of shirts, waders, and fishing vests of Marigold, Puce, Cinnamon, and Bubblegum, we’ve got a better uniform than grubby Dakotan Oil frackers …

Our Montana guides, He-Men all, wipe big handlebar mustaches on plaid sleeves, wearing bigger cowboy hats complete with real sweat stains, and could comprise the visual equivalent of Fleet Week to our gentler brethren, and we could increase that 70 Billion with fly shop pinups, calendars, and even some sell some Sage Hoodies, so long as we cut the sleeves off and make them more of a muscle-tee look.

… think muy malo … only hunkier.

The gay community has the proper monetary demographic, is well educated, and possesses the refined sensibilities to understand the innate beauty of the bamboo rod, the well tied fly, or the rakish cut to your waders …

As Outdoorsmen they would likely be cleaner than our unkempt variant, eager to embrace environmental issues, and likely would see scattered beer cans as unsightly, not hesitating to pack them out as we would.

… more importantly, they would add much needed intelligence quotient to our parking lot small talk, to fly shop staff, and add that smartly appointed, much needed professionalism to wader selection …

“ … excuse me, Sir, do you dress to the left, or to the right? …”

It’s said that politics makes strange bedfellows, this being an election year with the environment destined to lose to whatever creates jobs fastest, can we afford to overlook any articulate, passionate, and monied group of voters?

It’s time we overlooked our differences … Sweetpea …

For WT Bash, who was nice enough to inquire what I was spending most weekends on (besides laundry and travel)

What Color Am I?That last comment was innocent enough, but all the hellish labor, gnashing of teeth, and fits of cursing that go into a simple task like selecting final colors, are invisible to most .. as is the time spent sulking …

Dyeing is already a place most fear to tread, and the reality of choosing colors for dry flies is an agonizingly long effort.

So I’ll demonstrate my pain by asking, what color is that innocent little swatch featured above?

Dyeing materials for dry flies is not the rich and colorful business that is dyeing hackles for steelhead or big chunks of polar bear for streamers, rather colorations used for dry flies are typically pastel, a weak shade of color, not the lemon-yellow, orange-orange of your favorite breakfast cereal …

Instead you take an intentionally weak helping of color and dilute it so the colors are suitable for dry fly bodies; the pale olives, rusts, yellows, and grays, that make up your go-to colors.

“Weakening” is much worse to contemplate, given the many variables that affect bright colors, and how weak colors add more complexity given the many paths to dilution, including; additional water, pulling a material after a short immersion, or overwhelming a fixed amount of color with a large amount of materials.

… and while I continue to insist that dyeing fly tying materials is really quite easy, getting the same color a second time is &%#$@# impossible. Sure we write copious notes to record both keeper colors and clean misses, but when waxing lyrical – what exactly did you mean by “toothpaste green?”

Most colors of dye are mixtures of other colors, that when combined in a traditional bath, yield something similar to the label. A complex color like Olive, which contains yellow, green, and black, begs the question – which of the component colors dyes first?

If the black colors first, then yanking the material quickly yields a gray. If either the green (yellow+blue) dyes first – it’ll either be a dirty yellow, or a cold pale green – and if the yellow is first it’s liable to have a hint of either black or green, and will wind up a mustard.

Resolved to buy someone else’s efforts? So, have I …

What’s complicating things is I’ve had my hard water softened compliments of Culligan, and the increased salt in the water has added a new wrinkle to old calculations.

Even better is the announcement that well water is no longer fashionable in my town (read toxic) and how they’ll be pumping Sacramento River water in to mix with all the agricultural runoff. The resultant brew will have chemicals added, “to make it smell and taste better.”

Which means all my hard work will have to be redone in 2016, once construction is complete property values decline even more …

Until then, I continue to plunk perfectly good materials into an intentionally weak stew to come up with the twenty or thirty needed to make a good dry fly selection. Then I try to create them a second time the following week, after reading my careful worded notes …

This latest trial was for the Pale Morning Dun color (for the Hat Creek / Fall River drainage of California), and was a miss. The Pale Olive was the correct intensity but it needed a bit more yellow to match the version dyed last week.

Most vendor-created packaged dubbing change a couple shades with every run, they just run big batches that last a couple of seasons to make it less noticeable.

It’s easy enough to save the dull material at left, I’ll add it to a weak yellow bath for a minute or two and it’ll be nearly indistinguishable. It’s one of those hard lessons learned early, “ … that nothing can fix a dye job that’s too dark …”

Which is why after shipping out quite a few samples, I’ve gone silent over my latest brainchild.

Add in work-related travel, a winter that never came, and I’m behind on a great deal of efforts I was counting on completing during those dark, rainy, months between Christmas and Opening Day.

* The swatch above is Olive, yet the yellow component dyes first with only a hint of the black and green, yielding dirty Mustard. Care to try to get that a second time?

No, Mister Bond, I expect you to DIE …

Fly fishing boasts as many well heeled captains of industry as Wall Street, and while we have great fun at their expense, we don’t typical reference them by name – instead we use their Indian name, “Those that can buy a fly rod AND a set of waders in the same year.”

… which is why you’ll never be counted amongst them, given how rarified that space is …

While we’re saving for some island getaway featuring umbrella drinks and fish we’ve never seen, they’re thinking of buying the entire island and anchoring it off of the Keys next month …

Project_Utopia

11 decks worth of floating island that allows you to follow the Trade Winds … anywhere …

Utopia is not an object to travel in, it is a place to be, an island established for anyone who has the vision to create such a place. Measuring 100m in length and breadth, and spanning over 11 decks with the equivalent volume of a
present-day cruise liner there is enough space to create an entire micronation.

To hell with bamboo, think like Tsunami Debris and wallow from one time zone to the next.

Your own province, kingdom, city-state, or capitol, make your own Fish & Game laws while defending your micronation from your wine steward and the coup he’s planned with your stevedores …

AK-47’s are extra.